Newsletter

December 2018 Newsletter

Brother Knights – November was another busy month for the council. First, a big Thank You to those that participated in our annual memorial service for deceased members. It was nice to see that our attendance was up over previous years. Dave Frendreiss and Deacon Bob did a great job with the ceremony and the fellowship after the service. Though we hold this service only once per year, let us continue to pray for our departed brothers throughout the entire year.

I hope that you and your family had a chance to attend our parish mission. Fr. Jacques Philippe gave insight on personal prayer and the Beatitudes. I especially appreciated his explanation of what it means to be “poor in spirit”.

Our Christmas Tree Lot setup was truly a challenge this year due to multiple events falling on the same date, and conflicts with member’s personal schedules. On top of that, the truck with the trees arrived 2 hours early. A small group of dedicated volunteers, along with our co-chairs worked very hard to setup the lot and unload 500 trees that Saturday morning. They all deserve our thanks for bearing the brunt of that heavy lifting in support of one of our biggest events. Now that the trees are in place, we need workers to man the lot. Please use the online signup for the Tree Lot to cover a time slot, as it gives our co-chairs a clear idea of when coverage will be light. Sign up at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0949a9a829a2f58-tree3

Another team of dedicated individuals worked to setup our community Nativity scenes. The number of sites were down due to road construction, so be on the lookout for possible locations to host a scene. Thanks also to those brothers who decorated the friary and the church exterior with festive lights. And, work continues Tuesday evenings packaging Nativity yard sets for the next couple of weeks.

In what has become a growing annual event, our Adopt-a-Sailor program grew in both the number of Navy recruits (45 in attendance) and in the number of volunteers. This year we opened the event to parishioners to assist with donations of food and to help with staffing, and they responded well beyond expectations. The recruits expressed their gratitude through individual personal messages of thanks, as well as with a rousing rendition of Anchors Away from the entire group.

We received back 97 raffle ticket books for the Illinois Vocations Support Program, a slight increase over last year’s totals. Thank you to Gene Gonzalez for running this event.

Now on to December. Our Family Christmas Party will be held on Saturday, December 15th. This is a great event where all our families join together to celebrate the Christmas season and look back on another successful year of Charity, Fraternity, Unity, and Patriotism. I hope to see you all there.

Breakfast with Santa follows the next day on Sunday December 16th. Let’s support Marv Basch in his first time chairing an event and provide lots of help to make this a well-staffed event.

We have our best opportunity of the year to bring in new members on December 20, at our Knight Before Christmas degree. We are arranging for a pulpit talk the weekend of the 15th & 16th, and I ask that each of you reach out on that weekend and invite a school dad or a non-Knight parishioner to join our council. Seal the deal by joining the candidate by coming to the degree on the 20th.

From my family to yours, wishing you a Joyous Advent and a Very MERRY CHRISTMAS